According to the Ministry of Health (MOH), surrogacy refers to the arrangement where “a woman is artificially impregnated, whether for monetary compensation or not, with the intention that the child is to be the social child of some other person or couple”.

Commercial surrogacy often involves a fee paid to the surrogate mother. By hiring a surrogate mother, you are essentially hiring a woman to carry and deliver a child for you.

With more people facing fertility issues and couples increasingly seeking alternative routes to have children, there is a growing number of UK families created through surrogacy.

In the last three years, the number of children being born through surrogacy has almost tripled according to figures from the Ministry of Justice Family Court.

Surrogacy is no longer a taboo – along with adoption it has become an accepted alternative to traditional child birth. It has even recently featured in the Archers on Radio 4 and has been put into the headlines by Kim Kardashian and Kanye West who have recently used a surrogate to have their baby, Chicago.

Washington Governor Jay Inslee has signed into law Senate Bill 6037, which substantially updates and improves Washington’s version of the Uniform Parentage Act (UPA).

The UPA is the law that addresses how people are legally recognized as parents. This update strengthens protections for LGBTQ parents and non-biological parents, while maintaining the protections for rape survivors created by the 2017 Rape Survivor Safety Act.

On Jan. 25, 2018, the Appellate Division, Third Department, issued a significant decision in Matter of Christopher YY v. Jessica ZZ, 2018 NY Slip Op 00495. Underlying the court’s determination is the conundrum which it describes as follows: “Application of existing case law involving different-gender spouses, addressing whether the presumption [of legitimacy] has been rebutted, to a child born to a same-gender married couple is inherently problematic, as it is not currently scientifically possible for same-gender couples to produce a child that is biologically ‘the product of the marriage’ [citations omitted].”

Andrew Powell, barrister of 4 Paper Buildings, considers recent developments relating to surrogacy law, including new guidance, as well as the latest cases concerning administrative errors and the HFEA.

H (A Child: Surrogacy Breakdown) [2017] EWCA Civ 1798 (17 November 2017)
Like so many of the reported surrogacy cases in this jurisdiction, in H (A child: Surrogacy breakdown) [2017] EWCA Civ 1798 the court – on this occasion, the Court of Appeal – highlights once more some of the complexities of surrogacy in the absence of any form of regulation.

The facts of this case can be summarised as follows. A and B were a male same-sex couple who entered into a surrogacy agreement with C and D who were a heterosexual married couple. A’s sperm and a donor egg resulted in C’s pregnancy with H. The parties’ relationship broke down subsequently and communication between them ceased. After the birth, the solicitors representing C and D wrote to A and B to inform them that they no longer wished to follow the terms of the agreement and would not provide their consent to the making of a parental order (one of the essential ingredients under s54 of the HFEA 2008).

The Supreme Court on Monday let stand an Arizona ruling that said paternity should be applied the same way in same-sex marriages as it is in opposite-sex marriages when it comes to determining parental rights.

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Monday let stand an Arizona ruling that said paternity should be applied the same way in same-sex marriages as it is in opposite-sex marriages when it comes to determining parental rights.

The court’s refusal to hear the case means Suzan McLaughlin still has parental rights over the child that Kimberly McLaughlin conceived through artificial insemination while the two were married.

A New York state man who supplied his sperm for a lesbian couple’s at-home insemination was denied a paternity test by a state appeals court last week, possibly ending his battle for parental rights over the now 3-year-old girl who was born as a result of his donation.

A recently proposed law gives parents the ability to choose the sex of their child when conceiving through in vitro fertilization, a process that’s become more popular over the years.

This choice isn’t given to parents because they’d rather have a boy instead of a girl; it’s a little more complicated than that. The proposed law could only be used in situations where the child is at risk of inheriting genetic diseases.